Why You Shouldn't Worry About Switching to IPv6 Now

A lot of coverage of IPv6 over the past few years gives the impression that you need to switch to IPv6 shortly. That's not necessarily the case, although, especially for a consumer or a small business.

The late 1970s

Since the late 1970s, Internet Protocol version 4 has been the standard address system for identifying and locating computers, routers, and other hardware on the Internet. However as of February, all 4 billion addresses that IPv4 provides have been given out. To fix the problem, a second protocol, IPv6, debuted a few years back, although adoption is not but widespread.

IPv4 is the original network protocol, at first designed to connect university and government mainframes. Since the number of connected systems has skyrocketed from merely dozens back in the 1970s to billions today, the original protocol had to be reworked to handle more systems than the 4 billion it provided for. IPv6 can support 2128 addresses, or about 3.4x1038 devices.

For most homes or small businesses, making the shift to IPv6 doesn't need to have a major impact. Really the same NAT innovation that lets many networks use a single IPv4 address for each office--no matter how many systems they have--will as well allow a network to have an "outside" IPv6 address and continue to use the existing IPv4 addresses inside the firewall. The only required change in such a case happens at the firewall or router that connects the network to the Internet.

The internal devices on your network over to IPv6

This means that at first you don't need to switch all of the internal devices on your network over to IPv6. Even the U.S. Office of Management and Budget will be using the NAT strategy for most of the federal system at a glance, converting outward-facing systems to IPv6 in 2012, and at that time the rest in 2014.

A lot of small businesses will find that their Internet service providers not only lack a deadline for moving to IPv6 nevertheless also don't offer IPv6 addresses or services but.

Great many small-business-oriented products don't

And a great many small-business-oriented products don't but support IPv6. For some products, adding such support may require only a software upgrade; many older products may never receive that, but, so new hardware might be necessary to make the switch.

Because IPv6 can add security, increase performance, and offer other advantages just as ease of use and network traffic flow control, it's worth planning for. Usually, even though, it's no rush for most small businesses.

Possible exception is if you use Voice-over IP

A possible exception is if you use Voice-over IP, which may require IPv6 addresses sooner to put it more exactly than later, depending on the carrier and PBX system. If this is the case, your VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service provider should give you substantial advance notice.

The reason not to convert all systems together is simple: Many older PCs, network switches, routers, print servers, and other network devices may not support IPv6. During a server could run both IPv4 and IPv6, and permit both types of connected devices to talk to one another, this arrangement introduces additional complexity and can contribute to the load on the server. Just in case, network administrators will need to switch the setup over, a process that can take for the moment a few minutes for each device on the network.

Many organizations may not even need to switch at all until their ISP does. The Internet will run both IPv4 and IPv6 for many years to come, and your ISP will translate automatically for you if your network is after all using IPv4. If you want to use an IPv6 address for your network, or if your ISP notifies you that it is converting and that you'll need to have an IPv6 address, the conversion process happens in two steps: First, you'll need to get a new address, and second, you'll need a router that supports IPv6.

The external IP address your network will have is assigned by your ISP and is used by any outside system sending data to your network. You'll need to coordinate with your ISP to obtain this address. The address at the time needs to be associated with the names of your e-mail, Web, and other servers, using the domain name service. Registering an IPv6 address for a domain name can nevertheless be complex, and some providers may not have a system in place for that but.

New IPv6 address

Once you have a new IPv6 address, you'll as well need a router or firewall that supports IPv6. Such products are however hard to find, especially in less-expensive, small-business-oriented versions. Cisco and other top-tier products have IPv6 support--though even there, often the only way to know which products support it is to read the manuals.

If you have an IPv6 address, and your router or firewall has IPv6 support, you may not need anything more. The router should be able to translate between your internal IPv4 network and the Internet, and unless or until you need to connect more systems than just an e-mail or Web server directly to the Internet, you might not have to make any more changes.

Eventually--when all your PCs are running Windows 7 or later and your servers are running Windows Server 2008 R2 or later, and when all the rest of your network hardware is less than two years old--you may want to consider moving to a completely IPv6 network.

At that point, with each device having its own IPv6 network, you'll gain some substantial advantages, just as the ability to easily and securely access any device on your network from any outside system without special remote-access software. But, it may be for the moment three to five years earlier the average small business needs to work on this.